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A third cloned long-tailed macaque monkey will soon be born in China, said Huang Wei, the vice minister of science and technology, at a press conference on Sunday.

According to Huang, it will be named ‘Meng Meng’, meaning 'dream' in Chinese, reports Chinese news portal China.com.

China announced in late January that it had successfully cloned two macaques, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, from adult somatic cells, using a similar method to that which cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996. When the names of all three monkeys are put together, they form the phrase ‘Chinese Dream’.

Zhong Zhong and her sister Hua Hua, born at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in November and December 2017 respectively, are the first primates to be cloned from somatic cells, which are cells other than those used for reproduction.

Huang said that these cloned macaques could speed up medical research into Alzheimer's, autism, immunologic deficiencies and tumours, as well as metabolic disorders.